Five Times Atlantis Loses Sheppard
by llethe
Summary: Maybe Sheppard remembers what it is to see the world from the sky. Maybe Sheppard doesn’t know that he’s never going back. AU.
1. I Am Still Right Here

Disclaimer: _Stargate Atlantis_ is owned by SyFy. Titles taken from "Hurt" by Johnny Cash.

Summary:Maybe Sheppard remembers what it is see the world from the sky. Maybe Sheppard doesn't know that he's never going back.  
Timeline/Spoilers: Part One: "Conversion" AU.  
What Floats Your Boat: Gen. PG-13. Language. Character death. Sheppard: Ford, Teyla, Rodney, Lorne, Ronon.

Author's Note: This five-part series is complete and will be posted in full. I finished it back in late 2008, before SGA was cancelled, and I am now just getting all the parts edited and posted.

**Five Times Atlantis Loses Sheppard  
by llethe**

I. I Am Still Right Here

Though his hand hovers too close to Sheppard's left shoulder, Ford doesn't dare touch him.

"Sir! Colonel!"

Neither "sir" nor "colonel" mean a fucking damn. All Sheppard acknowledges is the scent. Air Force or Marine, superior officer or subordinate, teammate or lost charge – none of it matters beyond the weight Ford gives it. For Sheppard, as long as Ford smells like Wraith, it's all good.

Except, it's not really all that good.

In the beginning, Ford had only recognized Sheppard by the grace of his hair (which doesn't grow) and clothes (that don't seem to bother him). Eventually, Ford came to see the familiar, human face twisted under the weird ass Wraith DNA. The freaky alligator eyes were the worst to look past; Sheppard just didn't look like Sheppard with those eyes.

Seconds after Ford's men had been massacred, Sheppard had crouched over him, freaky fucking alligator eyes yellow and wide, head tilting back and forth like there was nothing holding his head to his neck. It was then that Ford recognized the hair, the black pullover under the tac vest, and even the way Sheppard looked down when he was thinking.

"Sheppard?" he'd said and been sniffed in return. "Jesus Christ, what the hell…" Ford reached up, not really thinking, and touched Sheppard's hand. He didn't even manage to get a good feel, before Sheppard's other hand slammed into his jaw. Ford heard the crack of his head against rock – _again_ – and an inhuman half-shriek, half-growl before the cave and his former commanding officer bled away to black.

Touching isn't any good, and that's okay. Ford didn't want to touch Sheppard anyway. But there were other things that weren't any good, either, like Ford being alone in the cave; or Ford being allowed to leave the cave; or Ford being allowed anything without Sheppard's tacit approval.

After a while, Ford didn't quite mind being held prisoner in his own damned cave. After all, he didn't have to worry about Sheppard naming things (because Sheppard didn't talk) or eating all the damn food (because Sheppard didn't eat real food anymore; after Sheppard had eaten three of his men, Ford had figured that one out real damned fast).

All of which meant that Sheppard was a Wraith or damned close to it. Sheppard was the enemy, and Ford should have put him out of his misery at the earliest possible opportunity. Only Sheppard was still Sheppard, his commanding officer despite everything, and whatever human there was left in him still mattered. Right?

There _was _still human left, Ford knew without much doubt. Sheppard couldn't have found him by accident, and he couldn't just like to stick around because of the smell of enzyme. More than half of the men Sheppard had killed had been fully jacked on it, and as far as Ford witnessed, it hadn't even been a concern.

Clearly, Sheppard had a taste for humans – _Jesus fucking Christ –_ but they never visited human populations. Even if they had, Ford would have killed Sheppard before he let him… Well. Do _that_. So Ford trapped his Wraith, took what he needed, and let Sheppard gouge his inhuman fingers in what was left. At least he did it quietly – none of that raspy shit the full-blown ones do. ("_It's not really supposed to sound like an orgasm, is it, Sir?" "That's not going in the report, Lieutenant," though Sheppard probably meant, "What the hell kind of sex do you have?" Which McKay actually asked.)_

It's just that afterward, Sheppard got agitated and restless, like the one they had to bomb from orbit: mindless with rage and violence, and that was usually when it was all Ford could do to get them back home before Sheppard took off for a few days. Ford wasn't quite sure if he would have been disappointed if Sheppard had ever failed to come back.

Though, when Sheppard was "normal," he wasn't actually too bad to be around. He was kind of creepy in an "I'm not human, but look, I might remember you" way. Sheppard would watch him, hang back in a way that still said "hovering," or he'd lay somewhere near, eyes open and unblinking, breaths quiet and slow. During those times, Ford would talk aimlessly, mix "Sir" with "Colonel" and, painfully too often, "Major," when he forgot or when he wished.

Sheppard didn't need any words, even when, one day, a jumper flew overhead. His shoulders drew back, and his expression actually became somewhat animate: a clear call to action. It was so John Sheppard that it hurt to think about what they'd lost.

Without any hesitation, Sheppard darted toward the ship, and Ford could only follow.

"_Lieutenant, on me." "Yes, Sir."_

When they got to the jumper, it wasn't like coming home. The ship was visible: ramp down, lights on, and entirely abandoned. Sheppard stopped meters from the ship, _maybe_ aware of the inherent trap. Ford saw something like yearning on Sheppard's face, or at least he thought he did. Atlantis was calling him back, and maybe Sheppard remembered what it was to see the world from the sky. Maybe Sheppard didn't know that he was never going back.

Sheppard didn't speak even when _they_ found them. There was Teyla, McKay, Major Lorne, and that guy from before. It was the grand reunion, the entire team back together. Ford's nerves jumbled together, twisting his stomach, and he only felt more anxious as Teyla approached Sheppard.

He let her, alligator eyes gridlocked on her face. Ford had never seen Sheppard more vulnerable, not even when he was human. There was something left of him that even allowed Teyla to touch her fingertips to the rough skin of his cheek. Given that, Ford had no idea what the hell Teyla was thinking when her other hand delivered a hypodermic needle to Sheppard's upper arm. Of course, Sheppard went from abso-fucking-lutely docile to squeezing her windpipe in a split second flat.

Though his hand hovered too close to Sheppard's left shoulder, Ford didn't dare touch him.

"Sir! Colonel!" Ford didn't know what else to say, what else to do.

McKay, of course, was freaking out, and Ford heard enough from him to connect a few previously missing dots.

"And it is _months_ too late for that cure to do a damn thing!"

Seeing so many guns pointed at Sheppard and Teyla grasping for every iota of air, Ford steadily moved backward and away. He watched as the guy moved in closer, alien gun ultimately coming up point blank at the back of Sheppard's neck.

"I lost him once," the guy said. "I won't do it again."

It should sound like a threat but the regret there was too heavy.

Ford ran.

-end (1)  
llethe / March 2010


	2. I Am Still the Same

Disclaimer: _Stargate Atlantis_ is owned by SyFy. Titles taken from "Hurt" by Johnny Cash.

Summary: Sheppard: nothing casual, nothing easy. A panic in his voice not often heard.  
Timeline/Spoilers: After "The Return-2," before "Sunday." Spoilers for episodes throughout the series.  
What Floats Your Boat: Gen. PG-13. Language. Darkfic. Sheppard: Lorne, Weir.

Author's Note_:_ I should have said this on the first part of the series, but there are no happy endings. It only gets darker from here. This is me exploring my kinks, which are (1) beating the hell out of my favorite characters, and (2) ambiguous endings. Thanks for the reviews so far, and, most importantly, thanks for reading.

**Five Times Atlantis Loses Sheppard**  
**by llethe **

II. I Am Still the Same

It's not that they didn't notice something was wrong.

They'd noticed that he was tetchy and _literally_ careless, in the sense of, "I don't care how you do it, Major, just get it god damn _done_. Not so hard." There, a sort of ruthlessness that lacked malice and everything else that generally made Sheppard a gratifying and – forgive the term – easy CO.

Maybe there'd been an edge in his eyes, and maybe there'd been a distinct lack of feigned laziness and easy-going whatever-ness (the kind that mauled on the soul of the Air Force) in how he carried himself. Lines in the shape of crescents dragging under his eyes, frustration locking his jaw, and all of it together just made him very…unpleasant.

At the core of it, they weren't really quite used to worrying for Sheppard in the sense of the mundane. Flying nukes onto hive ships; transforming into a Wraith bug; going missing and coming back on a live video stream courtesy of Kolya; stealing a jumper from the SGC to rescue Atlantis of Replicators – that's when they worried. They didn't worry over a bad mood, even if that bad mood was a very _long_ bad mood.

Then there'd been the nap that benchmarked the descent into this nightmare.

Sheppard didn't mess around with mission briefings. His people were everything, and his team was more than that. He didn't blow off mission briefings like he did State of the City briefings. (And it really was amazing how Sheppard was fast enough at sudoku to make it look like he was taking notes.) The stolen little nap – in his credit, a very fitful nap, the guilty kind where he kept jerking awake – made people stop ignoring and start worrying.

"Yes, and I would be the _first person_ to call the mission off, _if_ I thought I wasn't in a capacity to do my job."

Lorne almost felt guilty for eavesdropping, but he was compelled to compare and contrast, to see if Sheppard came off as anywhere near normal around Dr. Weir.

"Then there is no harm in letting Carson take a look at you." A pause. "John. You look like hell. And falling asleep during a briefing _isn't normal for you_."

She didn't mention all the other little things, like the – excuse the term – McKay-inspired bitchiness. Lorne didn't think Dr. Weir would call it that, anyway, which took most of the fun out of it.

"Well, it was boring. More so than usual," Sheppard didn't say.

Lorne could almost hear the words in his head, especially the exaggerated inflection on the last part that had driven Lorne up the wall when he'd first met the man.

"Elizabeth, I…"

"John, don't make me."

Questioned answered, Lorne bolted before Sheppard officially conceded the point and left the conference room.

The mission was officially postponed for twenty-four hours. All Lorne heard between ducking away from the lightweight Weir-Sheppard power struggle and gearing up the next day was Sheppard had those twenty-fours off and that Lorne himself had command. Sheppard's presence on the mission was only a testament to how much faith they had in him, yet Lorne had every expectation that Sheppard would be on stand-on afterward.

Stress was a downhill battle, mostly in that it tended to snowball, snowball, snowball, and getting back up the proverbial hill was a bitch. So much stress that people noticed meant long talks with Heightmeyer and long periods of time when missions weren't so much happening. No one wanted anyone – team leader or team explosives specialist or team grunt – to snap under the stress while off-world, or during combat, or even during drills and war games.

Sheppard fit Atlantis so flawlessly that no one really remembered that he wasn't a stargate native. He hadn't come from Stargate Command. He came from the Middle East, Antarctica be damned, and his first command back in the game was as the acting military commander of an alien outpost 300 million lightyears from home. And he'd originally gotten that command by mercy killing his commanding officer. So, sure, Sheppard was a prime candidate for a bona fide case of too much stress; even his going on this supposed cakewalk was a bit of a mystery.

Which was seriously what Lorne was thinking when Dr. Weir called down to Sheppard. He and Sheppard, the only members of either of their teams still on base, looked to the control room and didn't miss the unexpected presence Carson. A split second later, the gate shut down: a two-team mission off-world without either commanding officer.

Lorne didn't know what to think then. Sheppard needing the chance to catch his breath did not warrant _that_. A stressed-out Sheppard wouldn't lead to Sheppard running through an active gate when told to stand down. Sheppard had his bouts of heart attack-inducing "why the _hell_ do you do these stupid ass things?! Sir," stunts, but that wasn't one of them.

Worry? Yes, absolutely, now.

Maybe more so, because when Lorne glanced at Sheppard, he nearly did a double-take. The remnants of the exhaustion in Sheppard's face were gone. He looked amused, a dark sort of levity. There was no humor, no goodwill.

"_Open_ the gate, Elizabeth." The drawl, the inflection of disbelief – _don't do this here, don't do this ever, what the hell is wrong with you? _that Lorne wanted to hear more than he actually did – was pitch perfect.

Lorne would normally expect Sheppard to leave the gate room, slide up the stairs, and discuss the issue face-to-face. For all that had been said about Sheppard's disrespect of authority, he had _never_, as far as Lorne had seen, openly questioned Dr. Weir in front of a full audience.

Well, Sheppard didn't leave the gate room, and he had just openly questioned Dr. Weir. His hands were too tight around the P-90, locking up his shoulders. There was little of his usual droop; it was all wound tight in his too-straight back and too-hard set of his jaw.

All of which didn't mean much. Maybe it meant she really pissed him off, pressed too far into his job and burned him. Making him seen Carson. Making him take 24 hours to pull himself together. Cutting him off from his team, from his mission, seconds before he would have stepped through the event horizon and gone to do his job. Lorne could easily see the cause of the frustration, the anger boiling under the surface. It just didn't feel right.

"Colonel Sheppard, stand down."

It was Carson's presence that linked the puzzle together. Carson, who looked pained and sick to his stomach, a scanner clenched in his hand. It was Dr. Weir's voice that provided another crucial piece: there was certainly worry there, but it was a hard voice, the best command voice she had going for her. It was that only Sheppard was ordered to stand down, not Lorne, too.

"Elizabeth. Open the gate to the planet where you just sent my team."

The lights flickered, just a quick flash that made Lorne wonder if he blinked wrong. Though, Lorne swore he heard the control room begin to power down for a split second. He would swear by the sick feeling doing flips in his gut, enough to slowly move his right hand from his P-90 to the 9MM at his thigh, flipping through every mental note he had ever made about subduing friendlies that have possibly gone crazy.

"Come up here, and we'll talk about it." _But we're not opening the gate for you_.

At that point, Lorne thought "oh" and "shit." She was trying to talk down _Sheppard_, who suddenly reminded Lorne of a caged animal that somehow knew it could kill anything in its way without a lot of effort. It wasn't _exactly_ the expected reaction to being grounded.

The "oh shit" came in when Lorne realized that whatever Weir and Carson knew, Sheppard knew it, too. Had _known _it.

"Or." It wasn't a question. It was another drawl, the kind that meant Sheppard had a plan and the side opposing him needed to run.

Sheppard's hands left his P-90.

The lights flickered again, stayed dark longer and made more of a fuss when they came back on. Just what they needed: Sheppard being on the creepy side of weird and Atlantis deciding it looked like fun.

Sheppard pulled a C4 detonator out of an easy pocket in his flak vest. His "or" option, evidently.

"So. Open the gate."

The four Marines in the room had their sidearms drawn, though tentatively. Lorne was reacting more than thinking when he moved in front of Sheppard, his own sidearm aimed straight and strong.

"I _will_ shoot. Drop it."

"Not opening the gate, then, huh?"

Sheppard didn't give him time to answer: he pressed the button. Lorne pulled the trigger.

Sheppard fell to his ass just as tremors reverberated through the floor and shook the walls. He hadn't been bluffing. _God damn it, he hadn't been bluffing, what the fucking _fuck_!?_

Atlantis went dark. The lights died, a cascade of failure from the fixtures on the walls to the ones inside the control room stairs. From behind him, Lorne heard the control room power down, the slow hum that went down, down, down until all the white noise he'd never noticed wasn't there anymore. The gate was last, symbols left to darkness, chevrons dead. Like dominoes, they all fell, one after the other after the other.

Ending with Sheppard, whose hands fell from his P-90 and went to his head, whose body went from a live wire to flat on its back to curled in on itself. There was blood and strangled moans from Sheppard. The comm was bursting with reports: jumper bay powerless (but still there), the rest of the city dark (but still there), the south pier at the bottom of the ocean, the area completely unstable, people dead.

Slabs and pieces of John Sheppard's city drowned without a shield, without a chance. Atlantis had responded to the betrayal.

Lorne moved closer to Sheppard, keeping his aim. He didn't know if he should listen to Sheppard's meltdown (he really didn't want to) or the voices in his ear (which he didn't want to hear, either). He just kind of wanted to go on the cakewalk mission, and he wished, selfishly, that he had been one of the first through, to leave this mess to Ronon or Teyla.

"There's more C4." Sheppard: nothing casual, nothing easy. A panic in his voice not often heard. But it was _Sheppard_. Lorne could easily see the difference between the man talking now and the one who'd just lit up Atlantis. Why hadn't they seen this before? "You have two…"

Just like that, he was gone again. Eyes illuminated gold, as if to spell it out for them, but the fight was over at the end of four 9MM's. Sheppard's eyes were open, a smile on his face, despite the guns in his face and the blood soaking the left leg of his pants.

Lorne stumbled backward – breathing, breathing, breathing – hand at his ear, fingers fumbling to tap his radio on, to add his voice to the melee of panic.

"Sheppard's…"

This didn't happen in Pegasus – only it had with Caldwell – but when, god damn it, when? On Earth, obviously, but it wasn't like the SGC was lax about procedure, and it wasn't like Sheppard had been scheduled to come back to Atlantis all of those weeks ago. He'd stolen a jumper on a whim – and that hadn't even been his idea – and there's no way, there's no way, but there he was, with _one of those_.

"Sheppard's a Goa'uld."

-end (2)  
llethe / March 2010


	3. A Million Miles Away

Disclaimer: _Stargate Atlantis_ is owned by SyFy. Titles taken from "Hurt" by Johnny Cash.

Summary: Resolve comes without much thought. Timeline/Spoilers: Before "Sunday."  
What Floats Your Boat: Gen. PG-13. Language. Character death. Dark. Sheppard: Teyla, Ronon, Rodney.

**Five Times Atlantis Loses Sheppard**  
**by llethe **

III. A Million Miles Away

His life has become a mantra of "I don't know," "I can't remember," "please," "don't," and "no." Days are cut to ten hours, his life spent restrained and in agony, fighting against a machine he doesn't understand. He fights to safeguard the memories he can't recall; they're the ones he can't see but are _there_, he knows it – why else would they be trying so hard?

He's giving up Atlantis, symbol by symbol. They tell him how many symbols they need: seven. They show him how many he's given: three. They tell him that the last symbol is a given; they don't have to ask or to guess. So, really, they need six symbols, and he's already given them half of what they need.

It's been ninety-five days. He doesn't try to keep track, but he does, somehow. Numbers, maybe; not a memory, not something he can forget, something that is a part of him. Something that tells him who he is, even if it's just a sliver of the whole. It's been ninety-five days, nine-hundred and fifty hours of their mind raping and torture chair, and if he's only halfway there...

He doesn't think he'll live long enough to meet the other half. He doesn't think anyone could live that long. Either he will give them what they're looking for, or he'll die.

Such a resolve comes without much thought. It's a slow build-up, perhaps borne of his almost-escape.

It had been his first chance, and he'd taken it the moment he saw the opening. He killed five of them at the outset. He snapped their necks, smashed their noses into their brains, and took a gun and ran. He ran and he killed, until they locked down their prison – _ it looks like the city; it looks so much like his city_ – and captured him between two doors.

Of it, he remembers only those bits and pieces. Five kills and the feeling that he'd killed many, many more. He remembers being trapped and recaptured. He remembers how failure felt, then, how panic iced his veins and broiled his gut and made him scream his voice raw. Back in his cell – _it looks like quarters, because this place looks like his city _– he cried for the first time that he could remember.

His escape didn't work then, and it won't work again. Resolve doesn't coalesce around that kind of escape. If they give him an opening, he will kill them, and he will _escape_.

He doesn't kill them.

Though the light from the hallway burns his eyes, he sees enough to know that the person whose nose he slammed his fist into is a man. The man was careless with his sidearm – _different, why is it different?_ – and he is lucky in how quickly his hand finds and takes it from his thigh. The man stumbles away, somewhere else, and he would have taken aim and shot him, if not for the massive body that slams him back against the floor.

"_Sheppard! Sheppard!"_

They say different words and use different weapons, but all that means is that he is totally, royally fucked. It means that they want Atlantis faster; they want the symbols in his mind _now_; and they've sent other people to do the job. He can't fail, especially not if they're going to make it _worse_.

"Teyla! _Find the fucking sedative!"_

Tendrils of coarse, heavy rope falls against his face, and it's not until he looks at the face above his own does he realize that it's hair, not rope. There's something in the man's eyes, something in his expression – confusion? – that almost makes him want to hesitate, to freeze and to reconsider.

He doesn't _almost_ want to never go back to their chair and their room; he doesn't _almost_ want to safeguard the place they say he calls home.

The man has his left wrist pinned, is going for his right, and they've already called for sedative. He's losing. This chance will not come again, not in time. The longer he waits, the more reinforcements they'll have, and they'll have him drugged.

He can't let it happen again.

He smashes the gun into the man's face – once, twice – as hard as he can. He thinks he screams when he does it, and he tastes the man's blood in his mouth. The man slumps, just for a moment, but he can already feel tension returning to the man's arms and legs. He bucks the man off of his body, feels the grit of the gun in the palm of his hand.

He quickly presses the barrel firm against his own chest and pulls the trigger. Another moment and a woman would have stopped him; too late to win, she's still on top of him, hands pressed hard against his chest.

He doesn't care; they can't hurt him ever again. They can't use him ever again. They won't complete their symbols; they won't break him more.

"John! John... How could you do such a thing? Why would you do this?!"

This woman's voice breaks. With fuzzy vision, he looks at her face. Tears. He wants to ask why she would cry, but he doesn't have the breath.

He feels escape and freedom and victory, a place where memories and symbols don't matter. He closes his eyes, away from this room and this city-prison, and the woman who cries for a bullet to the heart.

"John, no. No. No. John! Open your—"

--end (3)

llethe / April 2010


	4. You Are Someone Else

Disclaimer: _Stargate Atlantis_ is owned by SyFy. Titles taken from "Hurt" by Johnny Cash.

Summary: Sheppard bows out gracefully.

Timeline/Spoilers: After "The Siege-3." Spoilers for season one and beginning of season two.  
What Floats Your Boat: Gen. PG-13. Sheppard: Weir.

**Five Times Atlantis Loses Sheppard**  
**by llethe **

IV. You Are Someone Else

John knows from the debriefings that he's not going back to Atlantis.

The pipe dream – the one that had him laughing at _himself_ – was that he'd be kept on as military commander, because he'd actually, you know, _maybe_ come to like the job. That was just a dream, something to help him sleep at night.

The hope, at least, was that he'd get to go back, even in his previous light switch capacity. He'd take that, for however long he'd be able to have it last, because he knew himself. He knew how attached he'd become to his people – the civilians, the military, the city. He'd seen the commanders the IOA preferred: hard ass Marines like Sumner and Everett. Not bad men, not bad people, just totally, completely _opposite_. They were the kind of officers he respected for achieving their rank but didn't respect as people.

They don't ask how he liked the job. They don't ask what he'd do different, now that Atlantis has a steady supply line. They don't ask who he would keep or toss back to Earth. They don't ask what he needs.

Their conversations live in the past tense, the only exception to that being the discussion on the Wraith. What will the _Wraith_ do. What will happen if the _Wraith_ find out Atlantis still exists. And he answers, because he's not stupid enough to believe that the war in Pegasus begins and ends with Major John Sheppard. He learned the rules, and so can anyone else.

John learned the rules of the Air Force a long, long time ago. He learned how to read a room. For him, Atlantis was barely on the table. His future was caught between an SG team and a forced retirement with a nondisclosure chaser, and between the two, the choice probably wasn't even going to be his to make.

Before, another twenty years until the next Atlantis tsunami seemed bottomless. Twenty years: he'd be coming up on sixty, and in the worst case scenario, still at the rank of major, if still alive. On days like that, with words like that, the Wraith threat felt years and years away, as if the Wraith wouldn't have a say in how long he'd stay in the same paygrade. As if the Wraith wouldn't have a say in when he'd take leave.

At least they hadn't. He would probably spend the rest of his life as a retired Air Force major (like it was supposed to be, before Atlantis), staring at relatively empty sky with the wrong constellations (and how cracked was _that?_) and making up scenarios to keep himself up at night.

After the military version of "don't call us, we'll call you," John knew he wouldn't see lieutenant colonel. He knew he wouldn't see Teyla again. And he knew he wouldn't see Atlantis, strongest gene yet discovered be damned.

After Holland died, after he chose Antarctica when the Air Force would have rather taken the sky from him, he never thought he would feel this way – this devastated, this numb – again. And he isn't sure if he should thank O'Neill for the opportunity or get a head start on hating the guy.

Instead, he doesn't fight Everett's recommendation. He doesn't fight going down because someone lived to hold a grudge for Sumner. When Elizabeth makes her job contingent upon his, when she bluffs and doesn't realize that they could call her on it and take them both from Atlantis, he tells her that he doesn't want to go back. He says he's reconnected with the family he didn't send a message to and is happy to stay on Earth, to do it right this time.

Elizabeth isn't dumb. He wants to feel Atlantis again more than he's ever wanted anything else in his life. For once, though, he bows out gracefully, all the while thinking that he would rather have never had and to have never lost.

--end (4)  
llethe / April 2010


	5. The Old, Familiar Sting

Disclaimer: _Stargate Atlantis_ is owned by SyFy. Titles taken from "Hurt" by Johnny Cash.

Summary: It's one of those situations that makes it easy to second guess, to think back and wonder why if the decision to damn yourselves was so easy, why going back and fixing it all isn't that easy, too.

Timeline/Spoilers: "The Defiant One" AU.

What Floats Your Boat: Gen. Lanaguage. PG-13. Ford: Sheppard, McKay, Teyla.

**Five Times Atlantis Loses Sheppard**  
**by llethe **

V. The Old, Familiar Sting

Fifteen hours, you think.

Fifteen hours was a long trip there and a long trip home. It's more than the difference between life and death; it's negative numbers. The only reasons you're still trying are because it's _the Major_, miracles aren't anything new in this galaxy, and Atlantis just can't lose him. Not before the Wraith come. Not when it's all supposed to be on him instead of all on you.

Déjà fucking vu, only he's got fifteen hours to survive instead of thirty-eight minutes to die. But it's still you, McKay, and Teyla back here with Sheppard; Markham and Faison, up front with the door shut, off radio because it isn't their place to ask. McKay is the kind of quiet he is when he knows winning isn't going to happen, and all he does is stare at Sheppard with wide eyes and an expression that reminds you of puke.

Survivor's guilt: one of four to make it out alive. It's one of those situations that makes it easy to second guess, to think back and wonder why if the decision to damn yourselves was so easy, why going back and fixing it all isn't that easy, too. Just to go back and check out the satellite, leave the Wraith to itself, and have everyone come home grumpy and alive.

Sometimes McKay looks at the provisional infirmary you've set up, but it's always straight back to Sheppard.

Defibrillator: you're the only one standing who has used it before. Breathing bag: if Sheppard stops breathing on his own, you're more than prepared to make him breathe until Beckett pulls you off. Heart monitor: it's better for you to know his heart is beating irregularly – Jesus Christ, it's already way too slow, and what if not breathing on his own isn't the worst-case scenario? – than to just hope and pray that it is. To hope and pray against everything you know that the clear fluid coming from his ears doesn't mean a thing.

Because it means a lot. Sheppard didn't just crack his skull open, like you did when you were seven years old. It means that he hit hard enough to do brain damage, and you're seeing it. The goo in and the bruising behind his ears, coupled with the fact that the last time you saw him conscious was at breakfast over thirty-two hours ago. The last time you heard him speak was just before the Wraith threw him to the ground and his head cracked against a rock.

Teyla loosely holds half a balled-up jacket against the back of his head; the gauze had gotten soaked straight through within minutes. Her one hand pets his hair; the other strokes his forehead, as if he can feel any of it. She's singing something in a low voice with her head bowed, and even in the close quarters of the back of the jumper, you can't really make it out. It's not for you, anyway.

Sheppard's pupils didn't react much when you flashed a light in his eyes. You don't think he's still in there (and you don't think about what that really means). You don't think he knows that you're all here, let alone that Teyla is singing and McKay is staring and being quiet. And you? You've redressed Sheppard's injured arm twice, like it matters.

Teyla wiped his face with the other half of the jacket and spare water, cleaning away the fifteen hours of sand, dirt, combat, and dead scientists. You'd cut open his shirt and moved his tags to check for other injuries; cracked ribs could wait, broken ones were more serious, and it could have come down to deciding between chancing a punctured lung or aggravating a potential spinal injury. But nothing looked broken, so you pulled out a foil blanket and carefully tucked it around his body.

"I'll take care of them, Major," you whispered then, hand smoothing the blanket across his chest. "I will. You don't have to worry."

You don't know how you're going to take care of them. You tried, during the storm and the Genii raid, and you were spoken to like no one would think speak to Sheppard. But you'll manage, even if McKay finally stopped staring when you said it, gaze moving up to the ceiling, wordless.

You will. You can. You have to.

Mainly, you're just glad that the blanket hides the very shallow rise and fall of his chest. The dead expression you can tolerate; like sleeping, you can tell yourself, and you've seen Sheppard sleep lots of times. But the weird breathing gives him away. It gives it all away, especially that taking care of them isn't a choice.

Back pressed against the jumper's hatch, you close your eyes and listen to Sheppard's off-rhythm heartbeats translated into a machine. You strain to hear Teyla: no more foreign words, just a slow melody that she hums, and you can imagine the way her fingers still take through his hair.

You hug your P-90 against your chest, because that's all this life is going to come down to in the end. The Wraith will probably kill you all – and probably not by getting lucky with more random formations of rocks.

Truth be told, it's not a bad way to go: a burst of adrenaline and fear before his body gave out to painlessness, mindlessness, pretty much nothingness, and the hours after in the company of friends. For people like you, people like him, that's pretty damn lucky: not dying alone and not dying in pain. It's just a lousy story, is all.

By the end of the ride, you know that you're going to have to use that defibrillator (the one you spend long minutes staring at, too). You know that it's either going to work, and you'll all breathe again for about five minutes, or he's going to stay dead underneath your hands. That depending on when he doesn't come back, you're going to be stuck back here with the body of another dead CO.

The next time you walk into Sheppard's city, you're going to be its ranking military officer. The last time you were scared of your rank – your lowly O-2 that barely comes with more than a drop in the bucket of time in service – Sumner's body had been left behind, and you'd just become Sheppard's XO.

Then, the only real comfort was that Stargate Command had sent you, knowingly and willingly, as third-in-command of the Atlantis military. Three officers they'd sent, and they'd only really wanted two. It's only now that you're beginning to feel rage, maybe only because they'll never know that the man they didn't want almost could have saved them all.

And you're still stuck with the dead body of another dead CO.

--end (5/5)

llethe / May 2010


End file.
